Day Two: Friday 7 November
Bathway Theatre
12 – 1pm, Concert 3 – Acousmatic
Hector Bravo Benard – Nowhere
This an electroacoustic piece built up of sounds produced with different household objects and processed using delays, filters, and spectral techniques. The sounds are arranged in 3D space and rendered using a higher order Ambisonics setup. The title makes reference to the feeling of being at once digitally connected to the whole world, but also completely physically isolated and with no real contact with people, close to the whole world, but at the same time situated nowhere at all.
Originally from Mexico City, studied philosophy and music at the University of Victoria (Canada), and later at the Xenakis Centre (France), the Institute of Sonology and the Royal and Rotterdam Conservatories (Netherlands), the Autonomous National University of Mexico, the University of Washington’s DXARTS center (USA), and the University of Birmingham (UK). He writes sound-based music for acoustic instruments, live electronics, and fixed media, with a focus on timbral and spatial elements. His works have been presented internationally at events such as the ICMC, BEAST FEaST, SEAMUS, Gaudeamus, NYCEMF, Sonorities Belfast, Espacios Sonoros, ACMA, and the Kyma International Sound Symposium. Currently lives in the Netherlands, working as an independent artist and music software developer.
Nikki Sheth – Chiroptera
Over 500 species of plants worldwide rely on bats for pollination, a fact that is not widely known. Bats are important insect controllers, bat guano makes excellent fertiliser, bats play a key role in dispersing seeds and bats are barometers of our planet’s health. Without them, there is no us.
This work looks to foster a deeper connection with the places we inhabit and the other species that occupy these spaces. It comments on the importance of bats as a species and the impact of this species on humans and the health of the planet. This work is part of long-term research that explores nocturnal wildlife and ecological change. It aims to inspire positive change in attitudes towards bats since Covid-19.
Nikki Sheth is an internationally recognised sound artist and composer. Her work aims to give voice to the environment and foster a deeper connection with the natural world through field recordings, soundscape composition and spatial audio installations. Her interests in environmental sound include interspecies communication, nocturnal soundscapes and acoustic ecology – the relationship between sound and humans. She was nominated for Ivor Novello Composer Award (2021), winner of the Leah Reid Award from the International Alliance for Women in Music (2023) and winner of the Wildlife Sound Recording Society Creative Class Competition (2025). Described by The Wire Magazine as ‘dark, murky and mysterious, but also gorgeously trippy, enchanting and utterly alluring’, her work has been played at Quench Gallery (Margate), Kings Place (London) and Ars Electronica (Austria) as well as on BBC Radio 3. Nikki holds a PhD in Musical Composition from The University of Birmingham. In 2024 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast supported by the SCCA for the research project ‘Visualising Nocturnal Soundscapes’ and this summer she has an 8-channel installation, ‘Midnight Harmonies: Szumin’, exhibited in the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art commissioned by The Wapping Project and British Council Poland.
Karmen Ponikvar – Murni
Seeing the invisible.
Perceiving?
Intuiting?
Immersing in a world strangely (un)familiar.
Splitters of proto-existence and imaginary explorations of border areas, molded with evanescent electroacoustic mist, are realized through multi-faceted investigation of sound, and the meanderings of liberated sonic forces and diffracted energies, guiding and directing the listening. Each sound is carefully selected for its potential and inherent spatialization, architecting and sculpting the aural space where multiple perspectives and trajectories coexist. Juxtaposing raw, unaltered material and its modulated counterpoints serves to create a dynamic interplay, traversing the threshold between the real and the imaginary.
Karmen Ponikvar (b. 1994) is a sound artist, composer and performer born in Slovenia, currently residing in The Hague, where she is studying sound at the Institute of Sonology. Through microtonal sonic structures, sculptures of spatial imaginaries and speculative philosophies of perception, she explores the intimate relationships between sound, space and place. Weaving molten fragments of synthesized electronic sounds and modulated field recordings, she creates fictional narratives, rooted in multilingual mimesis, seeking to uncover new ways of understanding the epoch that we live in – intricate webs curling into path waves, sublimated to a permanent aural becoming.
She has released works on the Slovenian labels Kamizdat, Senzorama, and AmbientSoup and performed at various events and festivals, such as Festival of radical soundwalks – TO)pot, SHAPE+ Sonica series, Rewire, International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, WFS Festival and MENT. Her work has been featured on radio platforms such as Radio Slovenia, Resonance Extra and Radio Študent among others.
Elena Gigante – Bolt
Bolt reflects on the fragility and impermanence of existence. Against the violence of history stands the search for the sacred, like a silence to be rebuilt. The use of impulse response becomes a metaphor for the longing for a peace that doesn’t exist — accompanied by the vital illusion that it could.
The piece is inspired by a passage from Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris: “The liquor of being is leaking out onto the ground.” The title Bolt is an anagrammatic acronym of “the liquor of being”, reversed. The same rhetorical principle shapes the composition, which uses three types of sonic material:
— concrete urban sounds, recorded during a residency in Malmö;
— synthesized sounds derived from a single impulse and processed with granular synthesis;
— acoustic sounds.
Among the latter: fragments from a flute score inspired by McCarthy and expanded into a vocal improvisation, and bits of Gregorian chant recorded in a cloistered convent in Southern Italy. Using impulse response, the reverberation of those bare spaces was recorded.
Bolt is also a game of absence, where convolution and deconvolution become metaphors for spatial transformation, from the physical to the virtual. It develops into a mythology of dematerialization tied to technology and quantum physics.
The heterogeneity of sonic material mirrors the word “bolt” itself, which may signify a flash of lightning, a blow, a thunderbolt, a projectile. As a verb, to bolt can mean to vanish suddenly — like existence leaking away. It also means to devour without chewing, echoing the capture of a sound impulse in an instant. The word evokes speed — like technology, like human life — but also the idea of art as a fleeting burst of beauty (a bolt of lightning) in the sea of misery.
Finally, “bolt” also refers to locking something — evoking suffering as a form of existential closure. And it evokes continuity — as in a bolt of cloth that unfolds endlessly, expressing the interplay of opposites that animates the work.
Elena Gigante (alias Elena Ghigas) is an Italian composer and sound artist. She is professor of Spatial Sound Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bari, and teaches Phenomenology of Art at the Centro Italiano di Psicologia Analitica, a postgraduate institution in Rome. She is also a Jungian psychoanalyst and a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology.
Her research explores the connection between sound, the brain, and the psyche. Her music has been selected or awarded at international festivals such as Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht, Sincronie Headscape, Tempo Reale, Quadriennale di Roma, Re-fest, The New Museum of Networked Art, Prix Russolo, Urticanti, MA/IN, Landscape24-Zeugma, and Marginale.
She received her high school diploma in classical studies one year early, on grounds of merit. She graduated with honors in both Piano and Clinical Psychology, and earned a PhD in Neuroscience studying sound motion and brain plasticity induced by musical training.
After completing studies at the conservatory, she developed her musical practice through non-academic paths, in dialogue with composers such as Georges Aperghis, Anthony Braxton, Du Yun, Brian Ferneyhough, Francesco Filidei, Helmut Lachenmann, Mauro Lanza, and George Lewis. She has published three books and several scientific papers. She recently carried out a collaborative spatial audio project at the Inter Arts Center, Lund University. Her latest pieces were released by the Italian label Silentes.
Otto livari – Diagonals
Diagonals is an acousmatic piece for ambisonics that draws inspiration from the phenomenon of diagonality as explored across visual arts, philosophy, and the art of human movement. In the visual arts, diagonal lines create tension and dynamics when intersecting with horizontal and vertical lines. Our eyes naturally follow diagonal lines, generating a sense of movement, instability, and even disturbance. Similar to how diagonal lines disrupt the visual plane, a philosophical element inherent in phenomena can cut across traditional categorical boundaries. This acousmatic composition delves into the various qualities of diagonality within an artificial cubic space, where three-dimensional pathways of sound are crafted based on Rudolf von Laban’s space harmony. The sound objects originate from recording sessions featuring Vittoria Ecclesia on bass clarinet, Heliä Viirakivi’s vocals, and a rattling bamboo stick. The work is part of the PhD artistic research project by a Finnish electroacoustic composer Otto Iivari.
Otto Iivari is a Finnish electroacoustic composer and a doctoral candidate at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. His artistic practice centers on acousmatic, electroacoustic music, specifically composed for multichannel configurations and ambisonic systems. Iivari’s work explores the expressive potential of organic sound materials, with a particular emphasis on spatialization and the dynamic movement of sound. A central theme in his creative research is the relationship between expressive human movement and the perceived motion of sound, examining their interplay as a source of artistic expression.
Otto Iivari has been awarded in several international competitions in the field of contemporary and computer music, including the Student 3D Audio Competition (Europe), the International Sonosfera Ambisonic Competition, the CIME competition organized by the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music, and the Prix Russolo. His compositions have been presented in concerts and festivals worldwide. He is currently pursuing artistic research under the supervision of Nikos Stavropoulos and Helena Tulve.
Holly Gowland – Rust and Reverie
Rust and Reverie explores the tension and interplay between the organise and the mechanical, where the delicate rustling of leaves is fragmented and reshaped through artificial processing, meeting the raw, unyielding textures of mechanical force. The piece reimagines natural sonic environments by subjecting them to artificial interventions – leaves crackle, stretch, distort and become metallicized under digital manipulation, while machinery carve through their fragility.
This composition interrogates the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, questioning whether the organic can withstand the imposition of mechanical rhythms or if it is inevitably subsumed. As the sound world unfolds, moments of symbiosis emerge, revealing unexpected timbral blends, harmonies, and tensions. Rust and Reverie invites listeners to consider the transformations of our landscapes – both sonic and physical – as human-made structures increasingly encroach upon the natural world. Can we ever truly listen to something truly natural?
Premiered at BEaSTFEaST 2025, Elgar Concert Hall, University of Birmingham.
Holly Gowland, originally from Manchester, UK, is a composer and researcher exploring the intersection of sound, space, and performance. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Music at the University of Birmingham, focusing on space-making as a compositional tool within changing urban environments. Gowland studied Composition at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and completed her MSt in Music at the University of Oxford. Her work blends field recordings, gesture, and spatial design, often using custom-built technologies to combine acoustic and electronic elements. She has presented on blend techniques and climate-influenced recording practices and has been commissioned by NMC and various performers. Her music has been performed internationally, including in Ecuador, Berlin, and the US. She is the recipient of awards including the Peter Redfearn Prize, John Mayer Prize, and Henfrey Prize. Gowland co-founded Electra Music, a platform supporting women in electronic music, collaborating with artists such as Linda Buckley and Sarah Belle Reid.
totaleee – Non è un atlante di traiettorie algo-siderali
This work is a declaration of intent. The intent of not realizing an atlas of calculated trajectories, but of abandoning ourselves to a journey adrift: an interstellar voyage propelled by astral winds of mathematical perfection. From our position, gravitational inertia governs the flow of celestial bodies. Objects that seem still, perform rotations and revolutions at unfathomable speed, their vast arcs rendered as languid drifts, while the smallest elements blaze through the acoustic field at startling velocity, leaving luminous traces in their wake.
The sonic environment is a dance of sidereal pathways, where musical fragments accompany our passage with pulsating rhythms. The course of these elements produce webs of isometric deception as time collapses and expands over the surface of our dome of sound, while we observe from the center of the orb.
Originally composed in High Order Ambisonics, this work was forged collectively—through shared practices, exchanged sounds, and the unpredictable alchemy of collaboration, allowing the music to evolve in ways no single mind could anticipate.
totaleee is a trio of composers of acousmatic music and laptop performers consisting of Giuseppe Pisano, Andrea Laudante, and Paolo Montella. In their composition work they use immersive audio technologies to create fictional environments of plausible and impossible nature. This is done through the use of multichannel synthesis techniques, physical modeling of room acoustics, field recordings, and feedback loops.
The trio debuted with their first piece ‘Non è un compendio di Etologia numerico-digitale’ in 2023 and since then their works have been played in many different contexts including ICMC (2023 Shenzhen, 2024 Seoul), Ircam (Paris), Sonosfera (Pesaro), ACMC (Sydney), Prix CIME, WOCMAT (Taipei) and many more. They have also received awards such as the first prize at ISAC 2024 (International Sonosfera Ambisonics Competition), the Teresa Rampazzi Award at CIM XXIV and a Distinction per Category at CIME 2023.